An Engineer’s Ahoy…

Hi Beta1- why do you want to do engineering?

Beta1- Unkil Unkil, because I want to get into IIT and then do MBA from IIM.

WTFFFFFF…………….grrrrrrrrrrrrr……wrrraaaaaa…….

But sadly this has been the story of majority of Indian Middle class Junta for decades. Yes, this is the bechara ladke se mard  transition phase of the poor middle class Indian boy, who now faces a challenge of holding on to his innocence while finding a place for himself in the Big bad world. (Yes guys have innocence as well, have a heart.)

If the same question would have been put to Beta2, he would have replied as:

Beta2- Unkil Unkil because I want to settle in US and earn money like anything.Well that makes more sense. Nothing wrong in that? After all we work for money, and people who cannot make it to US out of jealousy accuse the Beta2 breed of all kind of things.

This write-up is an attempt to explore an engineer’s life after engineering, when he gets into the real world. I, myself had the same confusion of what to do after engineering. I’ll put myself in the Beta3 category who consider engineering as an option safe enough for the future, or are unable to decide their career path.

No matter how hard we might try to follow Buddha’s middle path of peaceful co-existence between suffering and happiness, there are times when mere mortals like me, have to make a choice, a very important one, the one being that of a career.Enlightened by my previous mistake of having opted for Engineering in IT in-spite of being very good in Physics (I discovered my passion later for mechanical engg), I did not want to commit the same mistake and thankfully was selected for a long distance Management Development Program from IIM-C. I was yet to make my mind for higher studies. And I took my time to decide the same. Through this program, I wanted to explore myself, as to what exactly is taught in an MBA course and what kind of Jobs do we land up into after an MBA. The results were an eye opener. As per my understanding the following specialization would lead to following job roles:

1.       Finance: A very interesting subject. Most people eye for investment banking jobs, which involve trading of financial securities in equity, fixed income, forex, derivatives market. Creating different types of financial instruments, for different types of customers.

2.       Marketing: Like finance, is common to all the companies. Marketing of Product to Marketing of services. Job profile may vary from, trying to increase the sales of a product like lifebuoy soap in some remote village to promote and sell the IPOs of a newly listed company, whose underwriting has been taken by a Wells Fargo or Standard Charter.

3.       Operations Management:  How to manage an inventory of Hyundai cars, how to manage the supply chain of United Breweries? How to manage the operations of Infosys in APAC region.

4.       HR – Any well to do guy would love to have his wife as a HR manager.  The windows 7 of management, HR managers are young beautiful eves who speak fluent English. That is my understanding of HR management.

5.       IT- Of late , IT has been offered as one of the subjects in MBAs but in the subsequent discussion we shall try to figure out as to why, IT is the back bone of any industry and it is impossible to learn the tricks of the industry through text books.

6.       Strategy- involves gyan on Merger and acquisition, corporate law etc.

Having had a bit of exposure of management subjects was most attracted towards finance and wrote the CFA level-1 exam in December as well. It helped me get a bigger picture of the Investment banking industry and deep down in my heart I knew that finance is good but not that good.

I’m a hard core believer of what Steve Jobs once said “It is very important to love your work”

“Love” is indeed a mysterious word and few are lucky to have explored the depths. Loving your work, is indeed a big deal for someone like me, so I was taking out my time to decide what exactly I would love to do for the next 5-8 years.

In my quest for “the kind of work I would love to do”, I considered a lot of options, and finally one fine afternoon it struck me that I’m running away from who I really am. I have always hated the IT industry and have had my version, which had forced me to explore for different options for my career path. But as time is passing, I realize that IT industry is apt for someone like me. It’s all about playing your cards well. The two most important things one must look for in a career are Time and Money, which happen to be mutually exclusive in most of the careers. But IT industry is one field which is an exception.

Technology exists as it saves time and quadruples effort. Being an IT guy, you would implicitly end up saving a lot of time provided you master your subject. As it would be the same thing you would be doing over and over again. After one point you can earn a handsome salary in India itself and be at a few hours distance from your native, contrary to settling abroad and thinking twice before breaking the inertia of travelling seven seas to reach your native.

The path has hence been found, it is up to Neo to walk the path now. Never forget who you are. I’m an engineer and a proud one.